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William Wordsworth’s Poetry

To understand where “I wandered lonely as a cloud” sits in relation to William Wordsworth’s other major poems, please consult this guide, which provides an analytical overview.

William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”

“Tintern Abbey” is another of William Wordsworth’s most famous lyric poems. Like “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” this work offers a significant meditation on the relationship between poetry, memory, and the power of the imagination. These connections make for a fascinating and generative comparison.

Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

Though Matthew Arnold lived during the Victorian period, he wrote in a lyric tradition that had been renewed by the British Romantics, and especially by William Wordsworth. “Dover Beach” bears the indisputable imprint of the Romantics, and a comparison with “I wandered lonely as a cloud” helps show why. Both poems feature a first-person speaker who takes a tranquil view of the natural world as a point of departure for reflections on the nature of time, memory, and human existence. Arnold’s speaker is arguably more emotionally-tormented than Wordsworth’s, but even so, the poems make worthy and interesting companions.

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